Fallen
by Brianne Crandle
Summary: Voldemort attacks Hogwarts and leaves the Wizarding World in ashes, and Harry has to get over his own hate and revenge to defeat his greatest enemy with the one thing he can never understand....
1. Breaking

**Fallen**_  
__By: Brianne Crandle  
  
Chapter 1  
_  
  
  
The pain was overwhelming. It pulsated and contracted, slithering through his veins like a thousand biting snakes, his muscles tense his mind screaming. He couldn't escape it. It choked him, it cut him, it slowly began to kill him. The terrible pain crept steadily towards his heart, each beat bring his death closer and closer, his own body ticking off the seconds till his doom. Visions of his life passed before his eyes. The day he had received his Hogwarts letter. His first meeting with Hermione and Ron. The meeting of Voldemort his first year before the mirror of Erisid. His entire life was displayed like a Muggle movie screen. He couldn't help but realize how little time it took. He was too young to die, seventeen years was long enough to experience all life had to offer. People needed him, didn't they? He knew someone needed him. He tried to fight the death that crept slowly towards his struggling heart, but he was so tired. So very tired.   
  
_Let go! don't fight it! _his mind cried, desperate to have its rest.   
  
Harry!!! Harry! someone familiar and near by was screaming his name, desperation and grief poured through the voice and into his barely beating heart. Someone need him. The haziness of his mind began to recede. Something was pulling him back. Someone needed him.   
  
He opened his eyes slowly, his eyelids feeling as though they were weighted down by a thousand bricks, it took nearly all his strength to part them.   
  
At first he was met by only blackness, then the outline of shape's arose and then dim colors, and at last a face.   
  
Hermione's face.  
  
Her pale face was streaked with what appeared to be blood, mixed with splotches of dirt and grime, and she was crying, sobbing in fact. Her cries racked her body slim body, her Hogwarts robes were tattered and hanging, a large gash spread across one shoulder, dried blood was caked around her once white Oxford shirt.   
  
She was clutching his hand in hers but he couldn't feel it. She hadn't realized he'd open his eyes yet, her own were clouded with tears and sorrow.   
  
he breathed the word out like a shuttering wind, so soft he feared she would not hear him, but he was rewarded with a thankful gasp and Hermione's chocolate brown eyes met his own in a hazy trance.   
  
Harry oh Harry, stay with me, please dear Merlin don't die on me, she begged lifting his head gently in her free hand, holding him gently against her as she knelt against cold stone.   
  
_What happened to me? _he thought fighting to find the answers in his pain stricken mind.   
  
_Why is Hermione crying? She should never have to cry. _  
  
He was fading again. He could feel the dark haziness creeping up on him. Hermione realized it as well, his breaths had grown more shallow and farther apart. He was slipping once more. He was so tired. So tired.  
  
Harry oh please..... hang on! Voldemort's gone, its over! He left after you fell, he thought he had killed you.... y..you cant die ... y..y..you just cant. I need you.... I... need you! she was crying so hard now, her body shacking so badly it made his own shiver with the force of her emotional pain. He could see her stricken face through his obscured vision as he slipped further inside himself. That's when it all came into place. That's when he remembered.  
  
Voldemort.  
  
He and his Deatheaters had attacked Hogwarts.  
  
There had been blood. So much blood.   
  
And death. So many had died.  
  
Ron?   
  
He was dead, Harry could remember it so clearly now, as if someone had hit the instant replay and brought forth a picture from the back of his mind. Ron had rushed forward to save Ginny -Voldemort had taken her almost instantly as his Deatheaters plagued about the school, killing and torturing anyone and everyone they crossed. Voldemort had killed him so easily, it had been cowardly and quick, it had been so unfair. Ron hadn't even raised his wand before the killing curse struck him straight in his chest. The sound of his limp dead body hitting the floor echoed through Harry's mind, rebounding off the walls of his subconscious until he couldn't escape it.   
  
  
_Ron.   
He was dead.   
Voldemort had killed him. _  
  
Anger, so horrible and burning surged through him so strongly that it began to push back the pain and death that nearly overcome him moments before. Anger was going to save him.  
  
_Ron was dead.  
Ron was dead_.  
  
And Voldemort had killed him.   
  
he croaked as feeling slowly began to lace through his body, he could now feel Hermione's damp shacking hand clutching his own, but he no longer cared, more memories had flooded forth.  
  
Semus had fallen protecting Lavender from an advancing Deatheater, he'd taken a knife to the stomach, Lavender died moments later when she rushed her boyfriends murder, killing herself upon the same knife.  
  
Ginny had been taken away by Draco Malfoy, he could remember her screaming and thrashing as Harry glimpsed her through the haziness of fire and flying spells, he hadn't been able to save her, he prayed she was still alive.   
  
He could remember taking down a black robed Deatheater that had tried to ravage a 6th year Perfect in Hufflepuff, she had escaped, but only barely.   
  
He could remember Hermione, screaming spells with a furry he had never seen in all his days, her body had radiated power and energy that made attackers think twice, as she desperately protected those she cared for.   
  
And Dumbledore, he had been the first to fall, but not before taking half the Deatheaters with him. Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age had fallen at last, and it had been a brave death worthy of only the greatest of men. But what would the Wizarding World do without him?  
  
_Ron was dead.   
  
Ron was dead. _  
  
Where was _his_ noble death? He deserved to die a Knight and a martyr, but he'd gotten neither. Why hadn't Harry been able save him? Where was he when his best friend died?  
  
Voldemort, he had come face to face with Harry, and he'd tried to kill him... with a...with a.... sword of some kind. He dimly remember the black, green glowing blade as it cut into his body, slicing flesh.   
  
He hadn't been able to save Ron.  
  
He's dead Harry, Ron's dead, Hermione's hopeless sad voice cut him deeper than any wound ever could have, and his broken body couldn't handle the intensity of emotions that welled up inside him, and he met blackness before he even realized it was there.   
  
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, had escaped death once again. But those he loved had not.  



	2. Broken

**_Fallen  
_**___By:Bristar/ Brianne Crandle**  
  
Chapter 2**_****  
  
  
_  
Four years later........_  
  
  
Darkness.  
  
He had become used to it. The darker and lighter shadows it created. The tastes and feelings it stirred. It was almost as if it was no longer a thing, but a living breathing beast that he could control, bend to his will. He moved and shifted in its depths, bidding his time and waiting for the opportunity, his eyes flashing over the ghastly creature before him.   
  
It was tall. Enormously so, and thin, made mostly of snow white bone turned silver by the light of the half moon, and disgustingly rotting skin hanging by tendrils of flesh. The creatures head was inhumanly large and empty of anything that resembled a living person. The face of death and pain. The face of evil.   
  
The Undead being was hunched over a body, a body that appeared to have been recently killed. The dead human was a young obviously pretty girl, no older than thirteen, her long blonde hair painted silver against the snow, her paling skin glowing. A large gash parted her stomach and only recently stopped bleeding, a pool of warm blood beneath her in a crimson puddle of what had been her life. Blood. Sometimes he wondered if the ground was made of nothing else but the spilled blood of innocence.  
  
Shifting his grip on the sword in his hand, Harry Potter watched the Undead creatures every stomach churning movement.   
  
It took a shacking breath. It shifted its feet in horrible anticipation. It clenched and un clenched its boney, flesh hanging fingers, hungry for the flesh before it. Harry knew his time had at last come.   
  
With a wild cry of rage and force, the black figure sprang from the darkness, as if he was a living shadow the night had produced. The Undead creature turned to face the loud, angry noise slowly, its dim nearly dead mind confused and caught off guard. It took it a long moment to realize that a silver shinning blade was buried in its black heart.   
  
It screamed.  
  
The scream was like a thousand blood curdling cries of death. It shook the ground, it shook the trees. The snow around it blackened and melted into white steam with the force of the pain and agony. The cries of all those the Undead creature had killed, the bodies and souls it had possessed, streaming from its being. The death was suffocating and its potency would have made most men crumble and cry like frightened children.  
  
Harry didn't move.   
  
The creature caught fire around his blade in a brilliant silver blaze, that licked Harry's black leather gloved hands, tickling his flesh in the holy flames. Then the Undead was gone, not even a pile of ash was left, only Harry glittering blade remained, the moon reflecting gently off its surface.   
  
With a swift well practiced motion, Harry re-sheathed his sword, pulling his heavy midnight black cloak around him, green -almost black eyes- locked on the young body before him, careful not to step in the red tinted snow around her. Wide blue eyes, framed by long black lashes, were still open and staring in pure fear, and Harry reached out his hand slowly and brushed then closed with a gently flick of his wrist. He stood for another moment or so, his intense gaze shifting over the frozen body, then from within his robes he withdrew a pinch of salt and a flask of milk. He threw the salt on the body, and poured a bit of milk over the dark wound, then uttered an ancient prayer, its words made more of breaths and hums than words, and they flowed through the air like a sad entrancing song. Suddenly, as if lightning had struck, the body was gone. Taken. Never to be used for the Undead purposes.   
  
Replacing the milk flask back into his cloak, Harry slowly lifted the black hood over his ebony hair, then as silently as a whisper, he slunk back into the shadows. His shadows. The night, the dark, was his.   
  
  
Sometimes, when he was completely alone. He would return to that night. That horror. He would remember the screams and the pain. He tried to block it out to, erase the memories and faces that haunted him, but he couldn't, the anger, the hate was to hot, to real. Then from those hate filled, familiar shadows would appear fonder happy memories.   
  
Tonight under a thicket of large willow trees, he had decided fit for his shelter for the evening, another of those terrible, painful, good memories flooded over him.  
  
_ a familiar jovial voice cried, full of happiness and joy. Harry turned away from his bouncing team mates to see Ron and Hermione bursting through the crowd in a full out gallop. Hermione looked beautiful, her curly hair flowing out behind her like a soft chocolate brown cloak, eyes alight and praising. And Ron. Ron was wearing his famous congratulating smirk, the grin of a person who had been right... again.   
  
Harry embraced Hermione and swung her about, holding her tightly against him . The crowd around him shouting his name and hugging his team mates. Griffindor had won the Quidditch cup for the fourth year in a row, and Harry had caught the snitch thirty minutes into the game.   
  
I _told _everyone there was nothing to be worried about, Ron drawled lazily crossing his arms over his chest, Your the bloody best Quidditch player the school's ever seen, why the hell wouldn't you win?  
  
Harry laughed, over come with happiness, and lightly embraced his other best friend, who gave him an awkward pat on the back.   
  
Come on Harry mate don't get all mushy on me, the other guys are watching.  
  
Ron your impossible.  
  
Well I bloody well hope so!  
  
Everyone laughed and Ron winked at Harry warmly before giving him a light punch in the shoulder.   
  
Good job buddy.......  
  
_The memory faded and flitted out of his mind and dreams so quickly Harry physically reached out to grab it. For a moment. A small nearly insignificant moment, Harry's eyes were no longer cold and lost, but their old, shinning warm green that flamed and sparkled with laughter and mischief. But it almost to small and quick to be mentioned. And his haggard gaze returned a half second later. The happiness gone, and only darkness was left.   
  
_Ron. He couldn't save Ron._  
  
Sighing softly, a breath of white emitting from his blueish lips, he knew he had better return home. The thoughts and dreams that solitude brought him, were dangerous to his being, and his mind. Tears saved no one. Hate was the only thing that kept him alive.  
  
****************************************************************************  
Yes.. I KNOW that was short, but the next chapter will be much longer I promise, this is just to give you a feel of the much DARKER Harry, and don't worry the story wont always be this.... DEAD and dark.... next chapter will be better, and you guys will get to meet Hermione! Well sort of... *evil grin* Thanks for the reviews! *Passes out cookies* Thanks for the review Bg and CC *huggles them and gives them extra cookies*  
  
~Bristar  



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